Through The Grapevine
by Myrrhee
Summary: By the day of the colonial sedition, everyone in the fort knows that the Colonel's youngest daughter and the youngest son of the wandering Mohican plan to escape, get married, and have lots of children. Or is it escape, have lots of children and then marry? Everyone knows, except, of course, the two people in question. Sequel to "Boy Talk". UncasAlice
1. Tinder

_"…This meeting is over. Get out."_

If Phineas and Barnaby could have sat down and talked of a worse thing to be that day, they probably still wouldn't have been able to think of what a blasted thing it could be, to be assigned as sentinels on the doorway outside Colonel Munro's war room at that precise time.

Angry men filtered out of the room a few seconds after the Colonel's gruff yell, murmuring and rumbling like a dammed river. The principal agitators, Captain Winthrop and the strange trapper who dressed like a heathen, were tight-lipped and quiet. Nobody looked back at them, but Phineas noticed the way his younger colleague plastered himself closer to the wall as they passed, as if they'd somehow expand their anger to include them, if they saw them.

Once the militia was gone, an uncomfortable silence stretched over the corridor and the war room. Then Colonel Munro muttered something, to which Major Heyward gave a short, polite answer, which prompted Captain Beams to say something else, and the voices inside the room settled.

Phineas heaved a sigh of relief.

"Figure they'll stay?" Barnaby was once again firm-legged and holding his musket, like the British sentries with their furry hats, but his voice was insecure.

"Aye. Munro said he'd shoot them if they left, reckon they've got to be seen if they leave, and they've got to be alive to protect their families, so that's that."

"I guess so." Barnaby rocked back and forth on his toes. "But I heard that, when the Winthrop fellow went to get terms from Webb, they said they'd simply vanish into the woods one day if they weren't allowed to go protect their families."

Phineas made a noise of assent. "Hm. That they might."

Having come from another part of New York county, Phineas and Barnaby didn't know much about the circle of smooth-talking, rapid-firing men that surrounded Captain Jack Winthrop – not beyond the legends, at least. Phineas knew the young blond captain had a way with words, knew he and the men whom he called his friends were widely regarded as people of morals who knew their way around a musket.

The people who'd arrived with the Colonel's daughters, on the other hand…

"Hey, Barnaby. You heard about the Colonel's daughters, right?"

"What of them."

"Well, seems like they were ambushed by the Ottawa or something on the way here, and the two Mahicans and the blue-eyed trapper saved 'em."

"What, they're not Mohawks?"

"No! John is friends with one of the scouts, Shari-something, and he says he said they're Mahicans." Phineas felt a pleasant swell of conceit at being once more the bearer of the news.

"Oh." Barnaby seemed to consider that piece of information neither here nor there. Time to take out the heavy artillery, then.

"I was near the gate when they arrived, you know. Saw them arrive." He waited a little, for effect. "Miss Munro was on the arm of the trapper, and Miss Alice was on the arm of the Mahican, the younger one."

Barnaby finally turned to look at him with shock. "But I thought Miss Munro was engaged to marry Major Heyward!"

"Nay. Seems both girls lost their hearts somewhere in the wilderness. And that's not all." Phineas dangled the little piece of information like it was a fresh cut of venison, baiting.

"No?"

"No! I asked Ian – he's part of the Captain's inner circle." Phineas thought that sounded properly important, though he wasn't sure about any of the Captain's circles. "He didn't believe me at first, that the Major arrived alone and the rest of them were in couples, but Samuel told me this morning that they all talked about it, before the meeting today. Said the Mahican boy as good as told them he was engaged to the younger Miss Munro."

Phineas felt giddy as he watched Barnaby's eyes widen to twice their size. "And Colonel Munro said yes?"

"Of course he didn't, you blockhead." A bolt of inspiration struck Phineas then. "Didn't you hear the yelling earlier? I'd bet Munro's afraid his daughter might make a run for it if he lets the militia go. Bet the boy and Miss Alice thought to seize the chance."

"But who'd marry a fancy English girl to a long-haired heathen like that, Phineas?" Then a shrewd kind of tilt bent Barnaby's eyebrows. "Are you sure you didn't just make all of that up?"

"Of course not!" But of course, Phineas was in a pinch: who would marry a young girl to a redskin? There were colonies lower south that had laws against, and while New York had nothing of the kind as far as he knew, it would be a scandal of a match anywhere from there to Albany. But then the second bolt of inspiration struck Phineas, and the story was saved. "They'll go to the Moravians, of course."

"The missionaries who live with the heathens?"

"Aye, the very same. You're full young to remember, but the Moravians had a settlement here in New York with the Mahicans some ten years ago. Lived with and defended the Indians, they did, and then they were ousted as traitors. But them Moravians'll still be around, in Pennsylvania. Figure they'll go there."

Barnaby looked at Phineas as if he'd whispered him the date of the Second Coming. Phineas could have crowed with delight.

Barnaby scratched his forehead in contemplation. "No wonder the Colonel's at the end of his tether. The French are taking his fort, the Indians are taking his girls!"


	2. Spark

"Look. There, that's him. In front of the man in the buckskins."

"The one with the long black hair and the red feather?"

"Yes, the very same."

Jamesina McCann looked up from the merrily bubbling pot in front of her to the younger lasses a little to her right. What they were supposed to be doing was hand her the bowls and trenchers for the stew and bread; what they seemed to be doing was admiring the menfolk as they lined up before her pot for the midday meal.

The sturdy matron adjusted her bonnet with one hand and poured the man in front of her a generous spoonful of stew with the other, a smile on her face.

"Well, he _is_ quite handsome."

"Charity! Bite your tongue! Why he looks even wilder than the Mohawks!"

While her face did not change even a fraction, Jamesina McCann's colors did rise in a way that had nothing to do with the summer heat. Most of her ability to rage and hate had died with her family 12 years earlier, upon on the marshy earth of Culloden Field; but the talk of the girls was dangerously close to making her spark like tinder.

Of course, Mrs. McCann could not say what was on her mind, even if she did spark. Mr. McCann, along with their only son, had died an ardent Jacobite; as the Catholic widow of a Catholic, kilt-wearing savage who'd dared oppose the almighty reign of King George II, she knew most of the soft, powdered lobsterbacks were surprised when she wore clothes and ate on a table. They regarded her as the Munro family pet, and she expected that, even though it had been her at Miss Cora's side when the little girl had insisted on riding her first horse, and her who'd taught Miss Alice her first letters. She had long since learned to endure scorn.

But when these thin little wisps of girls, green and soft as newly sprouted plants, dared fill their mouths about savagery, Jamesina McCann could scarce avoid feeling rage on behalf of the Indians, on behalf of herself, and on behalf of all her noble Highlands ancestors.

As it was, she simply continued pouring and nodding. If her smile was sharper and her nod of acknowledgement more forceful, none of the men spoke a word of it.

"Is that the man who claims to be his brother behind him? You can't say _he_ isn't handsome, Temperance."

"Oh yes, look at his eyes. Like the summer sky, they are."

"You too, Rosanna?" The girl apparently called Temperance scoffed quietly. "Well I'll call both those girls silly, losing their heads over a pair of savages, no matter how handsome they are."

Mrs. McCann narrowly avoided pouring stew all over the hand of the man holding his bowl out to her. _So, this is what all the muttering's about, aye? The misses Munro, and the men who saved their lives?_

In a burst of military cunning, Mrs. McCann opted to keep her silence 'till her opponent was well and caught. She did clear her throat discretely, and one of the little adders might have turned to look, but a minute later they were at it again.

"The one good thing about this all is that Major Heyward will now be in the market for a wife! Fancy that!"

"D'oh! And he'll look our way, Temperance?" Rosanna's tone dripped with disbelief.

"Perhaps at you, Rosanna. You do have the loveliest complexion."

The Temperance lass seemed annoyed at having the conversation veered away from herself, and once more scoffed loudly. "Well, why not? Someone will have to console him when the nuptials take place."

"Oh nonsense. Everyone knows Miss Alice is getting married first. By the time Miss Cora and the trapper order their wedding clothes, Major Heyward will be putting his heart back together somewhere else – back in England, even."

Her companions were shocked into silence. Mrs. McCann wasn't sure she wasn't wide-eyed herself.

"What do you mean, Charity?"

"I heard it from that boy, Barnaby. He was assigned to the Colonel's quarters, when he was having that meeting with the militia. He told me part of the reason Colonel Munro's not releasing the men is that he heard Miss Alice and the Mahican were planning to leave with the settlers, and run away to get married in Pennsylvania."

"Oh!"

The Charity lass sighed dreamily. "Can you imagine girls? Running off with a handsome Indian brave!"

Rosanna answered with a sigh of her own, only hers sounded much more wistful. "Now there's another who'll never look our way. Say what you will, Temperance, but that fellow is a sight for sore eyes. And Alice Munro looks like a fairy, all white and gold: we're fishwives at her side."

Temperance huffed, but said nothing.

"Quite a couple they'll make." Charity went on, lively. Mrs. McCann wondered if she might not have been too quick to call her an adder. "Him all black and caramel, her all bright and white…"

"I still don't understand what the noise is about." Temperance fairly growled out her next words. "S'not like it's hard, tying up a heathen. Her father ought to have locked her in the holding cell, give her some time to gather her wits-"

"THAT'S ENOUGH!" Mrs. McCann struck the side of the pot mightily with her spoon. Rosanna, Temperance and Charity, along with a few of the lined-up men, ducked their heads as if the French were lobbing explosive rounds over their walls. "If Miss Alice wants t'marry a bear in a kilt, then I'll be ready to call him the very best bear and make him his wedding clothes! Now you little snakes hold your wheesht or I…!" She brandished her spoon at them like a saber. A drop of stew landed on Temperance's cheek, but she barely blinked. "We're all Jock Tamson's bairns, says I!"

Meekly, the girls turned to the ever shrinking pile of bowls and trenchers, heads down and mouths firmly closed.

Mrs. McCann turned back to her pot. A few turns down, the line brought her face to face with the Mahican who'd been causing the stir: tall as a mountain he was, with arms like tree trunks. He had elegant cheekbones for such a big man, and his eyes were dark and bright and alive. A little boy's eyes.

There were plenty of congratulatory words Mrs. McCann could have whispered to him, plenty of blessings and recommendations, even subtle threats that he take care of the little girl who'd helped put her own heart back together, or else. But she simply gave him a stronger nod and a fiercer smile than she gave the rest as she handed him his stew.

The man – no, the boy looked at her in mild confusion, stepping aside after a moment to let his blue-eyed brother get his share.

* * *

 _Hauld/hold yer wheesht: Be quiet_

 _We're a' Jock Tamson's bairns: We're all God's children_


	3. Candle Flame

Uncas had never felt more like a hunted elk in his life.

For most of the day, he'd caught sight of women in bonnets, militiamen he'd never known, and even a pair of lower ranked British infantrymen look at each other or whisper as he walked by. It was an uncomfortable feeling, particularly to someone who preferred fading into his surroundings, and it had only grown stronger as Nathaniel, Jack and the few other men of the fort he knew had vanished, leaving him to bear the eyes and the whispers alone.

Uncas had half resolved to abandon the parade and go back to the barracks when a hand wave from beneath the ramparts caught his eye. Ongewasgone was beckoning to him subtly.

Uncas supposed that the weathered Mohawk chief had things to talk about: the siege, Munro's decision to keep them all confined, the state of the Americas, perhaps. But as he joined him in the shadows with a deferential nod, Ongewasgone looked at him with bright eyes, as if Uncas were a particularly interesting item at the trading post.

"Uncas. How old are you." The older man addressed him in English, indicating their conversation was nothing secret or serious.

"Twenty summers, counting this one."

"Good." Ongewasgone nodded with appreciation. "Your youth will help you face the hard road ahead of you."

For all that he might have been talking about fifty perfectly normal things, like the war or the road to Ohio, Uncas was suddenly convinced that he was missing out on something, even as he nodded in agreement. "Life on the frontier is hard."

"It is. There was a time when every man with two healthy arms could leave camp without the constant fear of returning to find his women and children murdered."

That was a sentiment Uncas could relate to. His thoughts flew to the wreckage that had once been the Cameron homestead, a sharp jab of pain slicing through his stomach at the memory – outwardly, he nodded again, this time gravely.

Ongewasgone was infinitely more talkative than his father, but as both of them had their faces schooled into near-permanent emotionlessness, Uncas detected a faint shift in the way the elder Mohawk held himself: his face was as peaceful as it always was, but he radiated empathy at him at that moment. "I hardly mean to cast more shadows on this time of your life, Uncas. I know no better warriors than you, your brother and your father. If anyone is capable of keeping a family alive, it is the three of you, as you've demonstrated time and time again."

Uncas was taken aback by the compliment, particularly coming from a man even Chingachgook held in very good esteem. "Thank you."

"It's true. You have my support, the support of my kin, and all our best wishes for your future."

It was Ongewasgone's habit, to give slightly over-inflated good wishes to others from time to time. But it was one of the few good things, other than arriving at Fort William Henry in mostly one piece, that Uncas had happened upon since the last time he'd seen the Camerons alive, and he felt grateful for it. With the hand not curled around his musket, Uncas reached out to lay his palm on the formidable old warrior's shoulder with gratitude; Ongewasgone returned the gesture with a smile.

Ongewasgone moved to leave as they broke apart, indicating the end of their conversation. As Uncas paused to savor his newly acquired good mood, he heard Ongewasgone's footsteps pause. "I would recommend you and Miss Alice avoid the Colonel for a while after the wedding. It will be hard, but Edmund Munro is a warrior at heart, and he will accept another warrior as a son-in-law in time."

Ongewasgone's footsteps moved away from Uncas, who repeated the words in his head many, many times before they started to make sense.


	4. Hearth

"Is everything all right, Mrs. McCann?"

"Aye."

For lack of anything else to do, with the surgery overflowing with wounds that she didn't know how to suture, Alice had finally found refuge with the older woman who had been their housekeeper, nurse and sitter alike while they still lived in Scotland. That, coupled with how little Alice had seen of her once Papa had begun leaving on campaigns, made the prospect of an evening of darning socks and stitching shirts in the soothing silence of Mrs. McCan's small quarters akin to balm on chafed skin.

But there was something off. Mrs. McCann, gentle and slow to anger, was threading her needles and stabbing at the innocent pieces of clothing with a violence Alice had never seen in her, and had remained mired in a sullen silence that made Alice go over all their recent interactions, searching for the offense she'd clearly caused her beloved once-maid.

"Have I done something to anger you?"

"You, lassie? _Nevar_." Mrs. McCann punctuated her words with a brutal stab to a sock. She stared at her fabric victim with an air of having exacted proper vengeance over a foe before stitching up the hole in its heel agilely.

"You are sure?"

'Course I'm sure."

Silence descended over them. Alice had almost lost herself in the soothing repetition of making straight stitches when an explosion of sound made her turn again.

"Ya listen to me, lassie. Listen to _me_." Mrs. McCann had put down the mending, gripping the arm of her chair with her free hand feverishly. Alice stared into Mrs. McCan's solid brown eyes. There was a command in that gaze, peremptory and absolute. "Even if he's a bear in a kilt? If _you_ love him?" And here the older woman brandished her needle like Duncan did his blade. "Then _I_ love him." And then she turned back to the mending with an air of finality.

Alice stared at her, confused and endeared at her passion. For all that they'd never seen her even vaguely miffed when she and Cora were children, Mrs. McCann's anger was as she'd have imagined it: sharp, bright, and incongruously incapable of erasing her soothing, motherly presence. Her Scottish brogue, coupled with her deep voice, only further softened her words.

After a moment, a throat-clearing once more commanded Alice's attention. "My old maw, she didn't much like Fergus at first." Mrs. McCann didn't look away from her mending as she spoke, and Alice knew the older woman wouldn't, but she put down her own half-stitched sock and listened with both her ears and her eyes. "Said the McCanns had been Irish kings of old, but that the current McCann's line was weak and diluted – and Fergus the weakest and darkest of them all."

"Fergus…your husband?"

"Aye. Maw was still alive right after Culloden Field, when I came back to the old family homestead in mournin'. She said to me 'A sorry sight ya are, Jamesina, ah told you that weakblood would break yah heart', and a lot f'other things not proper for a young lady to hear."

"Oh, Mrs. McCann..." The _I'm sorry_ paused on Alice's lips, too small to encompass the ache she felt for the woman who'd never given them a cross word in her life.

"Nay, lassie. T'was a small hurt, compared to the loss of Fergus and Finlay." Mrs McCann sighed. "I left in the night, not a fortnight later, and your maw and pa employed me later that same month. B'fore I left though, I told that old shrew I'd do it, all over again." She set aside the finished pair of socks and fixed Alice with a piercing stare, one that seemed to cut through her and straight to the wall on other side. "Fergus was a warrior with fire n'his blood. Destined to be a Jacobite, to die in battle…and to bring me joy. One I wouldn't change for the bland, gray peace I'dda had if I'd never met him."

They stayed like that for a fathomless minute, and Alice felt the weight of Jamesina McCann's convictions settling over her like a lovingly made quilt.

"I…I understand."

"Good." Mrs. McCann lowered her eyes to the basket of clothes waiting for her attention. As she selected a pair of trousers torn down the seat, she laughed under her breath. "Tell that young Mahican of yours you both'll always have a home with me, f'your father insists on roaring. He's all bum and parsley though, Edmund Munro."

Alice pricked her pointer finger in surprise. She watched the bubble of bright scarlet blood flourish on her white skin and wondered if the heat was playing tricks on her mind.

* * *

 _Bum and parsley: all talk._


	5. Bonfire

Uncas wondered if he might be the joke on the part of some unseen force. That was the only reason he could have possibly managed to run into Alice Munro, after seeing no hint of her, on the evening of the very day his brother Nathaniel was arrested for sedition.

Before then, he'd seen her for the last time over her father's shoulder, staring at him with eyes large and liquid as a doe's, when his family officially handed Alice and Cora over to the care of their rightful protectors. She'd been muddy and sweaty, with a messy halo of her corn silk hair around her face; her mouth had been slack with exhaustion, but her eyes had been bright with it.

The Alice he'd seen then was different from the Alice who'd nearly run into him, a basket of linens in her arms, as they'd turned into the same corridor from opposite directions. That Alice glanced at him over the pile of folded cloths, had gone wide-eyed and rosy-cheeked, and seemed to look at the basket in her arms, as if she were thinking of hiding beneath the linens.

Her blush and skittish gaze told Uncas she'd very likely heard the rumor going around Fort William Henry about their impending union.

The story, absurd as it had sounded after the initial shock, had stayed with Uncas, persistent as the faint smell of gunpowder that lingered on all the shirts he had ever owned. He'd be assembling his musket, or joining Sharitarish, the last of the familiar faces in the fort after the night's desertion, on the walls, and the notion would slip into his thoughts: British, settlers, friends and strangers alike had thought he was to marry Alice Munro.

There was a hint of pride to the way he thought of it, that anyone had believed a pampered princess would throw away her life of luxury to run away into the wilderness with him. Him, who'd have to hunt the Americas clean of all their furs to give her even a miniscule part of the comforts she considered a normal part of life.

There was a good portion of outrage that anyone would think them unfeeling enough to abandon their families in the middle of the war's path, a hint of anger.

But mostly, Uncas was surprised by how his mind had seized the idea and taken to spinning it into a tale of its own.

To be engaged to marry Alice Munro, he would have had to fall in love with her sometime in the past two days. Not when they first met on the George Road, and not on the Ottawa burial grounds, where their closeness was simple survival; no, he would have fallen in love at the way she stared at a waterfall, awe and a hint of delight in her sweat-streaked face. She would have perhaps fallen in love with him as they shared a glance over Colonel Munro's shoulder, and would have sought him out in her own timid way, wandering into the parade or through the fort corridors on some invented errand.

 _To be engaged to marry Alice Munro_ , Uncas mused as he waited for Alice to collect herself, _would be to earn myself the chance to go keep Nathaniel company in the holding cells_. It was both surprising and relieving that the story had not reached the Colonel, or that he at least knew his own daughter enough to dismiss it as idle men's gossip.

"Good evening, Uncas." Alice was scrupulously polite, warm even, though her eyes were still fixed on the linens in front of her.

"Miss."

Alice glanced at him timidly, and her entire face contracted. "I can scarcely look at you. I'm…ashamed." Her fingers opened and closed on the handles of her basket. "Of…of Papa, and what he did to your brother."

A storm of anger, annoyance and worry rose in Uncas' chest. Rash, thoughtless Nathaniel. Had he thought ahead more clearly, his brother would have left with the militia. He and his father would have known how to find him, would have tracked him back to the settlements even. As it was, he'd been lucky: had Munro not been too busy attempting to survive the French bombardment, his brother would have been tried and hung hours ago.

Their father and Ongewasgone were preparing his defense, which mostly relied on Munro believing Nathaniel careless enough to have somehow missed the sight of two dozen men, a quarter of whom were his personal friends, slipping out beneath his post on the bastion. Uncas thought they'd be better occupied planning how to break Nathaniel loose before the siege ended.

"The law is what it is."

"It's harsh. Unfeeling. As…" Alice's eyes closed, and she breathed. Uncas suspected she was again thinking of her father.

Uncas had no answer for her, and nothing good to say about the Colonel. Instead, he followed her hand as it tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear, and wondered at how half of their meetings were spent standing silently in the other's presence.

"Someone kindly suggested I intercede on your brother's behalf, as my brother-in-law to be." A sad smile appeared on her lips, though her cheeks again went rosy.

"You've heard." Uncas was also surprised she'd even mentioned it.

"A rather persistent piece of gossip, that."

Uncas nodded, and for a moment both of them basked in a mutual observance of the absurdity of it, having a hundred odd people in a fit over a completely imaginary engagement.

Alice swallowed, humor giving way to eagerness."I wanted to tell you...I would have spoken in such a way, if I believed even for a second that such a thing would make Papa more receptive. As it is…it would have been worse."

"Brave of you, to even think it."

A breathless laugh escaped Alice. "Brave. I was not brave. Cora told Papa…" she hesitated, and Uncas wondered if it was insecurity, if she thought he might not be the person to trust with the words. "She told him that if what he'd done was justice, then the sooner French guns blew the English out of America the better it would be for the people here."

Uncas laughed, low and long, his shoulders shaking. It felt like so long since he'd laughed last. When he finally recovered, Alice had set her basket on the ground, staring at him with a mixture of wonder and amusement, as if she'd never quite seen him before. Then something in her mouth changed, loosening the smile into one of sadness. "Papa…he was a different man."

Uncas understood. _Before, she means_. The war had taken whoever Munro had been and filled him with her red wrath until his own flesh and blood seemed to not recognize him.

He spoke the words almost before he was done thinking them. "The price of survival is steep."

There was assent in the way Alice's lips scrunched into a small pink knot, holding back. Uncas imagined a sound of helplessness would have come from them, if she had allowed it.

After a moment's hesitation, Alice picked up her basket. "Mrs. McCann will be needing these."

Uncas nodded. He was wanted elsewhere himself.

The girl in front of him leaned the basket on one of her hips, thrusting her hand quickly through her hair to send back the trailing strands. She seized the handles, cradling her load defensively all of a sudden, as if trying to protect her chest with the linens. "I will try. To speak to Papa."

 _He will not listen, drunk as he is on the flames and the anger._ "Thank you."

"No. Don't thank me, please." The final glance of her eyes, the color of the wilderness at night, seemed to nudge something in his chest.

Uncas had no right to feel as if anything had changed. As he and Alice Munro walked away from each other, Nathaniel still lay locked in a holding cell beneath their feet, front and center to Edmund Munro's wrath for lack of a better target. Outside, French guns still inched closer to the walls of Fort William Henry, and even the much anticipated reinforcements, due tomorrow, seemed too small to confront the wave of bluecoats.

He had no right nor reason, but there it was: a hint of happiness and hope, like the first sign of spring, settling over his heart.

If he were engaged to marry Alice Munro, he would have fallen in love with her mere instants ago, as the parts of her that had broken against the harsh reality of the wilderness healed into a new whole, a scarred, canny innocence that was beautiful to behold.


End file.
